Dear Friends,

I want to introduce Angie McKaig. She’s a brave woman who reversed her diabetes by eating a low carb high fat diet and going against what she was told was healthy.

Her story will help you understand why so many people with type 2 diabetes are still struggling despite doing everything that their doctors tell them to.

Unfortunately, the conventional advice we get is more often than not wrong… It’s time to realize that if you haven’t already. I hope this story will help you do so.

The Story of Angie McKaig of Toronto, Canada

A year ago today, I was reeling from a doctor’s diagnosis… Diabetes.

Being the daughter of a long time diabetic, here is what my assumptions were going into it:

• “It’s a progressive disease” – Over time, no matter what I did, I would get worse. I would need drugs to manage my condition, and then more drugs. Pills first, then insulin.
• Feeling crappy would become a big part of my life – Dealing with highs, dealing with lows, generally feeling awful, sometimes daily, would be normal for me.
• I had a future of worrying about my health ahead of me – Diabetes is the single largest cause of amputations. Some people even develop blindness or heart disease. What if this happened to me too?

My doctor told me to change my diet. No more pop, she said. Less takeout food. Small changes.

She said if I didn’t improve my numbers before my next appointment 3 months away, I would be put on pills, metformin, to manage the diabetes.

And she said that I may also be put on high blood pressure meds, as my blood pressure had been rising steadily the past year.

I grieved, there is no other way to say it. I was sad. I was angry. I wanted my situation to be better.

I started to read all the usual sites – medical sites, diabetes sites and just got scared and angry and sad all over again.

Then I decided to finally make the lifestyle changes the doctor recommended. This left me feeling awful and starving a lot of the time.

I experienced sugar highs and sugar lows, which I’d never really had much before.

With the lows, I’d get so shaky and dizzy I felt like I was going to pass out. And the highs made me want to sleep for a year, I could barely concentrate.

I continued to read… I read everything I could get my hands on from the traditional medical sites until I had committed their advice to memory.

Once I had a foundational understanding, I went in search of other sources of information on diabetes.

I’d had enough physical issues over the years to know that sometimes there are ways to deal with or help a medical issue that just doesn’t pop up on WebMD.

Forums and other places where people gather to discuss and deal with their conditions can be invaluable sources of non-traditional, but sometimes very useful information, however, reading them requires some skepticism.

 

That’s when I found the beginning of the resources that would come to save my life…

Groups of diabetics all over the world were not just managing their day to day diabetes, but actually stopping or even reversing the progression of their disease.

And not just for a few years but for decades. How could this be possible?

Then I realized, these folks didn’t just have opinions about how to improve their lives, they used a science based approach; in other words, they used scientific facts to determine what was best for their health.

First, they recommended frequent personal blood sugar testing – far more frequent than doctors recommend.

After learning the reasons behind this, I wondered why my own doctor had told me that testing my blood sugar was unnecessary. This was very alarming to me.

How can anyone know what’s happening to their blood sugar if they don’t test it?

Gathering data about your body is critical to healing it. WebMD may not always know what’s going on with your body, but a blood glucose meter does.

I also started reading lots of medical studies and research. I’d never found a community of people online more dedicated to not just reading about but constantly questioning both traditional medicine’s and their own understanding of how the body worked.

These groups recommended a low-carb, high-fat diet.  

Eating this way was utterly foreign, and even seemed dangerous to me.

I also just didn’t think I could do it.

Are you kidding me?! I was a foodie of the Highest Order! It seemed impossible!

I had long talks with my husband about how “I didn’t think I could ever really do it” and “what about quality of life?

The turning point for me came about a month and a half after diagnosis, still feeling sick and uncontrolled and like I’d signed up for a lifetime of suffering.

I finally asked my husband one night while making dinner to look up how bad it could possibly be, just how high were the risks for diabetics and heart disease, anyway?

He looked it up, and told me that 30+% of all people, diabetic or not, die of heart disease, but diabetics have a risk that raises to 60+%!

I have never been so scared, nor cried so hard, in my entire life.

The next day, I resolved to try a low carb high fat diet no matter what. I was not about to die and leave my family behind. I loved them all too much.

Day by day, I learned more about my body. I changed the food that went inside it.

I tested my blood sugar every time I ate so I could learn what that food did to my body. If it raised my blood sugar more than a little, I just stopped eating the food.

My sugar highs and low decreased, and I wasn’t hungry all the time.

I finally started to feel normal.

The best part was, I was eating bacon, butter, cheese, beef, delicious cream sauces and 35% cream in my tea.

Food was *delicious*, satiating in a way it had never been before!

I stopped needing snacks every few hours. I stopped needing snacks, period. I just wasn’t hungry.

Meanwhile, nights and lunch hours were spent reading everything I could get my hands on, watching hundreds of hours of videos.

I got sucked into some truly diverse areas of learning In my hunt for the truth, biology, chemistry, medical studies, food and nutrition policy, endocrinology, food science, anthropology, and more.

For the first time when researching diets, something amazing began to happen… I didn’t get more confused as time went on.

Every time I learned something new, it fit into and helped to explain what I was learning. And all of that learning helped to explain the changes going on in my body.

Here’s what happened when I switched to eating a low carb high fat diet

• I lost 50 pounds, without even trying.
• My energy levels skyrocketed.
• My blood sugar stabilized; no more highs. no more lows.
• My blood sugar dropped back down from diabetic ranges to totally normal. Daily blood sugar range 65-100 mg/dl or 3.6-5.5 mmol/l.
• My HbA1C was 7.8 at diagnosis, and 5.2 after I changed my diet to low carb, high fat.
• My blood pressure went down from 135/90 to 108/70.
• My HDL increased. That’s the good cholesterol for those of you who don’t know.
• My triglycerides dropped by 60%. High triglycerides are a marker of heart disease.
• My skin cleared up. No more zits, no more dry and scaly patches which I’d suffered for years.
• I stopped having headaches. I have had two in the past year. Both times because I accidentally ate something I no longer eat.
• I have far fewer gastrointestinal issues. Gas, diarrhea and stomach upset were not uncommon for me. I can literally count on one hand the number of times I’ve had gas in the past year – and again, all related to accidentally eating something that I no longer eat.
• I have much less joint pain and inflammation.
• I don’t get sick nearly as often. I literally have not had a cold in a year, and I used to be the queen of colds.
• I’m calmer and more emotionally balanced

What’s even more, my family changed their diet to match mine! Guess what happened to them?

Here are the results my husband got

• No more headaches
• Fewer gastrointestinal issues
• Decreased joint pain and inflammation
• Increased energy levels
• Increased immune system (also no more colds)
• Calmer and more emotionally balanced
• Lost 50 pounds without even trying!

Here are the results my daughter got

• No more headaches
• Fewer gastrointestinal issues
• Decreased joint pain and inflammation
• Increased energy levels
• Calmer and more emotionally balanced
• Lost 20+ pounds without even trying!

I’ve saved the best stories for last, which is those of my parents

My mom is a 20+ year diabetic, on metformin for 10 years.

Once I taught her what to eat and how to test, she lowered her blood sugar to normal and was off metformin entirely within 3 weeks.

She remains drug free, 6+ months later. No more crazy highs. No more unexpected lows.

How often do you hear about someone 60+ years old who has this “progressive disease” for decades suddenly getting *better*? Very rarely.

My dad suffers from early Alzheimer’s. When he switched to a low carb high fat diet, he lost 20 pounds without even trying.

He’s also much more clear and mentally focused. Having complex conversations with my dad was hard before. He sometimes just couldn’t keep up. Now I trade medical studies with him and discuss the implications.

Have we cured his Alzheimer’s? No, I don’t believe so, but I do believe we may have given him more time with a clearer mind to enjoy his family, and for us to enjoy him.

How did my family and I get such amazing results?

I had to change my diet.

I had to fight every medical professional in my care team from doctors to pharmacists (more on this later).

I had to be willing to learn, to question everything I thought I knew.

I had to be willing to be thought of as a little crazy, yes, including by you.

Funny enough, everyone I speak to today thinks that the first food was the hardest to give up.

Want to know a secret? It is the easiest part.

And that’s coming from a woman who over the years has tried every kind of diet change possible to lose weight, failing all of them miserably: Low fat. Lightly calorie restricted. Heavily calorie restricted. Highly portion controlled. I even, ironically, did Atkins years ago, though not correctly.

Most of you who read my posts regularly on Facebook will already know this, but for those who don’t,  I am in no way deprived when I eat.

I eat steak, bacon, fried eggs, cheese, and whipping cream. I can have lots of above ground veggies. I eat when I am hungry. I eat until I’m full.

I even have dessert. I just don’t eat sugar, anything made with flour, any kind of grain, root vegetables or fruit.

And THAT is how I, my family, and thousands of other people around the world eat their way to better health while enjoying the very foods we have been taught to fear.

The dietary advice given to diabetics around the world is wrong

I’m sorry, but it just is.

Doctors and medical associations teach you the lie that diabetes is a “progressive disease”. But diabetes is absolutely not a death (or amputation) sentence.

However, you cannot avoid those progressions by eating whatever you want and “covering” with medication, or for that matter, eating what diabetes education centers teach you, either.

The medical community and diabetes associations advise diabetics to put the equivalent of 29 TEASPOONS of sugar into their bodies every day; into a body that cannot process sugar.

This is why diabetes is progressive. Because diabetics the world over are being literally killed slowly with this toxic and dangerous advice.

Diabetes is a full blown epidemic

Some estimates say that 10% of the entire world will have diabetes by 2030, that’s double what it was in 2011! Others say 50% of North American and European populations will develop diabetes.

Some of the more revealing studies indicate that possibly up to 75% of the US population *already* have an issue with their blood sugar and/or insulin levels, more on this later. Based on what I’ve learned, this isn’t just possible – it’s probably conservative.

That means three quarters of you, reading this post, are already on the path to illness. This is illness that doesn’t have to happen, and that you can avoid while still enjoying great food and having the quality of life you want.

I have an amazing life, amazing health, and a distinct lack of the scary future I once thought, and was told by the best medical experts, was inevitable.

Seriously. If they invented a pill tomorrow that destroyed diabetes permanently, I’d take it… but eat exactly the same way I already do the next day, and the next.

That’s why I’m sharing my story. To reach you, the person reading this.

 

You don’t have to find yourself sitting with the diagnosis I was given. And if you do, it doesn’t have to mean a death sentence or a severely limited life.

Please don’t just take my word for it. There are a ton of resources that can help you, just as they helped me. I’ve linked some good places to start at the bottom of this post.

I have a lot more to say and share – but I’ve asked for enough of your time today. Thanks for reading my story!

Though it scares me to death, I’ve shared this publicly on Facebook because if I can help just one other person I wouldn’t have reached otherwise, it’ll be worth it.

If anything I’ve said intrigues you, made you think, made you wonder or even convinced you – please, consider sharing it with your friends and family.

This disease is at epidemic proportions solely because we aren’t taught how to avoid it, and it kills millions because we aren’t taught how to control it. Help me stop this madness!

Resources to get you started on a low carb high fat diet

Eating Low Carb, and Why – Diet Doctor

https://www.dietdoctor.com

Why We Get Fat – Gary Taubes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEuIlQONcHw

Diabetes Solutions – Dr. Bernstein

http://www.diabetes-book.com

Blood Sugar 101 – Jenny Ruhl

http://phlaunt.com/diabetes/

Reversing Type 2 Diabetes Starts w/ Ignoring The Guidelines – Sarah Hallberg | TEDxPurdueU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da1vvigy5tQ

My Healthy Type 1 Son – Lisa Scherger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtiduHZdbUg

 

Share this story with your friends!